


a notion of marriage

by shell-heads (chocopies)



Series: Cap/IM Bingo 2018 II [4]
Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Marvel, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: 19th Century, Fluff, Former Soldier Steve, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Nobleman's Son Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 08:02:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16384313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chocopies/pseuds/shell-heads
Summary: "Sir,” Steve swallows, taking a deep breath and looking him in the eye. “I don’t have one yet, but I’ll have a farm, and a house, and my money from the government, and I was hoping to ask if I, perhaps-could court and wed Tony."“Tony?” Howards gapes, as if he there’s no possible way he’s heard himself right. “You’d like to-Tony?”“Yes, sir,” Steve says firmly, pulse notching higher when Howard shakes his head in wonder. “I’ll have the status and means to wed him happily, and I believe he’d be welcome to my advances if I was given leave to them.”“Right,” Howard replies with a rapid blink, disarmed, “you may of course have as much of his time and attention you’d like, son. Your courtship is very well-welcomed."Suddenly overcome with the need to see Tony at once, Steve wonders if it would perhaps be extremely rude for him to leave them right this moment to find him. Then again, he never did care for social etiquette.“Thank you,” Steve hears himself answer as if from afar, setting his teacup down and slowly rising to leave, his chest ballooning infinitely as Maria smiles at him. “Thank you-I’m sure you won’t regret this.”God, he wants to see Tony.





	a notion of marriage

There’s sweat beading at the back of his neck, his skin too tight and collar threatening to choke him as he waits, trying to remain as distinguished as he possibly can underneath all this unbearable heat and anxiety.

“Master Rogers?” Jarvis asks, the lines of his face softening when Steve jumps at his words, opening a hand to point at the parlor just ahead of them. “Master Stark is free to see you now.”

“Thank you, Jarvis,” Steve coughs, embarrassed, straightening himself out and sending a quiet prayer to God above that he doesn’t make a fool of himself in the moments to come.

“Good luck,” Jarvis whispers kindly as Steve passes him by, slipping something into his waist pocket with a quiet finger to his lips that almost makes Steve stop out of surprise.

“Master Rogers!” Howard Stark’s booming voice comes from the parlor, his smile wide and perfectly welcoming as Steve enters with a practiced smile of his own. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Good afternoon, sir, ma’am,” Steve greets politely, shaking Howard’s hand firmly and nodding at Maria with a less stiff upturn of his lips while she pours the two of them tea. “It’s very kind of you to make time for me amidst all the gala happenings you have to manage-I appreciate your time.”

“Nonsense,” Howard shakes his head, gesturing for Steve to seat himself and following shortly after, his hand coming to rest over his wife’s in a way that almost makes Steve hate him slightly less so. “I owe you yet for all the hard work you’ve done for us and this town, son. Hosting you for afternoon tea to help you with whatever you need is the least I can do, especially after all the effort you’ve put into helping us set Tony to rights.”

Fingers curling in to bite at soft flesh of his palms, Steve keeps his smile up wonderfully through the hot wash of anger that accompanies Howard’s usual disregard of Tony and reminds himself why he’s here.

“Well, sir, that’s actually the reason I’m here today,” Steve replies, feeling his pulse judder wildly as the prospect of actually saying it out loud. “It’s a bit irregular, with me not being from here as it is and no proper land to my name yet, but I’m hoping to buy Doctor Erskine’s land from him in the fall when he makes to leave, you see.”

“You need more money to buy it off him?” Howards interrupts, holding out a hand. “Say no more; I’d have given you any amount you’d like if you were the type to ask it plainly, but I know you’re too good a man to ask for something you haven’t earned. Anything you need, we can most certainly work something out for it.”

“No, sir,” Steve swallows, wiping his sweaty palms down before taking a deep breath and looking him in the eye. “I meant, I don’t have one yet, but I’ll have a farm, and a house, and my money from the government, and I was hoping to ask if I perhaps-”

“Perhaps?” Maria asks lightly, her fingers shaking as she sets down the cup as if she cannot bear its weight under the possibility that Steve might be asking what he is.

“If, perhaps, I could court and wed Tony before next summer arrives,” Steve says, his voice cracking slightly at the end, havoc wreaking itself upon his heart when Howard’s mouth falls open and Maria lifts trembling fingers to her lips, shocked.

“Tony?” Howards gapes, as if he there’s no possible way he’s heard himself right. “You’d like to-Tony?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve says firmly, pulse notching higher when Howard shakes his head in wonder, his face practically screaming to all the world and sundry what he’s thinking.

“It’s been quite good for him, spending time with you, I know that,” Howard begins incredulously, “but this is Tony we’re talking about here. He’s never been very comely or dedicated to anything but being a right handful, and lord knows you’ve worked wonders with him, I won’t deny that-”

“Howard,” Maria whispers, pinching his side and glaring when he rolls his eyes at her.

“Please, sweetheart, we all know it’s true,” Howard scoffs, sipping at his tea and grumbling. “He’s been nothing but trouble since the day he learned to talk.”

Resisting the urge to shatter the precious china before him in a satisfying show of violence, Steve insteads chooses to drink his tea in deeply, steeling himself to face the next few moments without destroying something worth more than all his earthly possessions altogether. He’d known walking in here how awful Howard would be, and he’d be damned if he let that get in the way of a-a possible future with Tony.

“I’m very fond of Tony,” Steve forces himself to say easily, the words terribly close to coming out in an affronted hiss. “I’ll have the status and means to wed him happily, and I believe he’d be welcome to my advances if I was given leave to them.”

“Well, of course he would,” Howard blusters, laughing like Steve’s told him something absurd. “I’d have to send him to an asylum if he ever deigned to turn down anyone who’d want a wild thing like him in the first place, much less a man as accomplished and dignified as you are.”

He’s worth two of you and more, Steve doesn’t yell, he’s beautiful and intelligent and lovely and I’d be the luckiest man on Earth if he were to look at me and want me even the slightest fraction I want him.

  
“Howard,” Maria warns him in an unusually cutting manner, her eyes so wide with hope and joy that Steve can feel it spread to his own chest. “I do think you’re supposed to say yes, dear.”

“Right,” Howard replies with a rapid blink, disarmed, “you may of course have as much of his time and attention you’d like, son. Your courtship is very well-welcomed.”

“Thank you,” Steve hears himself answer as if from afar, setting his teacup down with trembling hands and slowly rising to bow his head at the two of them gratefully, his chest ballooning infinitely as Maria smiles at him with a dear affection. “Thank you, thank you-I’m sure you won’t regret this.”

Suddenly overcome with the absolute need to see Tony at once, Steve wonders if it would perhaps be extremely rude for him to leave them right this moment to find him.

“Wait, Steve-where are you going?” Howard calls out as Steve stares at them for a moment more before placing his hat on head and making for the front doors, his legs shaking from the excitement coursing through him.

“I’m going to find Tony!” he yells, breaking into a hard run the moment his feet hit solid dirt to head for the stables, chest thumping a wild cacophony of fear and excitement and unbridled joy all at once.

“Young love,” Maria whispers, her tremulous smile bright as a fresh-cut jewel as Howard watches the door swing back and forth behind him incredulously.

“Tony! Tony, where are you?” Steve shouts as he skids into the stables, heart dancing itself away merrily in his chest as Tony walks out of a stall with surprise painting his face, black curls stained with sweat and his cheeks red from heat.

“Steve? What are you doing here?” he asks, wiping at a patch of dirt with his elbow and only serving to streak if further across himself.

Grinning when words fail Steve in the face of his climbing emotion, Tony shakes his head and laughs, stepping in closer to brush down the flyaway locks of his hair that had come up when he ran here, Steve’s face becoming traitorously warm.

“What’s got you into such a fit, Mr. Captain, sir?” Tony teases, handsome and bright-eyed and for the first time in Steve’s life, free to be his, and that thought breaks the last threads of restraint Steve had been holding onto so frightfully.

“Will you marry me?” Steve blurts, his chest burbling with liquid gold affection and star-studded hope, his heart beating so loudly it seems quite possible everyone in town could hear it loud as day, and Tony’s hands freeze in his hair, eyes wide as saucers.

  
“I-I’ll court you, of course, and I have savings, and Erskine agreed to my buying the farm, and I asked your parents already,” Steve rushes, wishing dearly to be able to take Tony’s hands in his own this instant and not wanting it to part from his hair at the same time. “I might not have the money to do it now, but I can buy you all those engines and gears and whizzers you’re always talking about from the capital, and you can have your own drawing room, and you’ll never have to go to any of those little parties you so hate and-and I’ll make you happy.”

Speechless, Tony’s hand falls from his head, and Steve tries to reign in all the other nonsense babble that wants to spill from his cursed loose lips until Tony’s said something, anything-only before he knows it, there are fists curling into the collar of his coat to yank him into a warm, firm embrace, and they’re kissing.

Tony presses up against him like Steve is all the air he could ever need, and Steve greedily swallows his desire like a man starved, curving a hand around the back of his neck and latching on.

“If I say yes, you can’t take your word back,” Tony pants, lashes suspiciously wet as he stares at Steve fiercely, the dawning ecstasy on his face warring with the clear disbelief he’s struggling with, and there’s really nothing else Steve can do but draw him in for another kiss, sweet and slow and smooth as warm honey.

“If you say yes, you can’t take your word back either,” Steve whispers against his lips, one hand reaching down to lace with Tony’s.

“Steven Rogers, you fool,” Tony laughs wetly, his free hand coming up to stroke Steve’s cheek gently. “If you don’t know how irrevocably and infinitely in love with you I am, you’d be the only one is this damn town. Hell, I’ve been in love with you since the day you rolled into town fresh off the fields.”

“Is that a yes?” Steve asks just to hear Tony laugh again, his pulse fluttering wildly at the feel of tan skin ripe and soft from the midsummer heat, Tony’s feet lifting off the floor to peck Steve once, twice, and thrice before he answers back.

“Yes, I’ll marry you, I’ll marry you better than anyone in this world ever could,” Tony promises fervently as Steve’s beam goes wide, wide, wide, “I’d have married you without a single penny to your name and nothing but the clothes on your back, you absolute fool, of course I’ll marry you.”

Unable to resist the urge to pepper him with adoring kisses, Steve looks at Tony, with his gorgeous smile and tousled locks and heart of pure gold, and he knows he’s the luckiest man in all the world for having him.

“You’ll marry me?” Steve asks again, partly to tease and partly because he can’t quite believe it, and Tony pinches his cheeks with a helplessly bright smile.

“I’ll marry you and you’ll never have another,” Tony announces grandly, his smile stretching into shrieks of delight as Steve lifts him up and swings him around, the overwhelming happiness coursing through his veins rendering him incapable of staying still for a single moment longer. “You’ve gotten yourself stuck to me now, Steve Rogers!”

“I’d have given anything in the world for it,” Steve admits honestly, entirely unashamed at Tony’s jaw-slack surprise. “I’d thought-maybe, you seemed fond of me enough that you might give me a chance, and now-now, I have you. God, Tony, you’ve no idea the things I’d do for you.”

Flushing hotly, Tony’s mouth works in a futile effort to produce sound, his expression so utterly ridiculous and yet charming that Steve hides his face into Tony’s shoulder and shakes silently with laughter.

“I-I’d never thought that you could ever-” Tony stutters helplessly, and Steve kisses him square on the mouth for no other reason than that he can, and that he’s in love.

“If you don’t know how irrevocably and infinitely in love with you I am, you’d be the only one is this damn town,” Steve quips, and when Tony trembles and lifts up, Steve really couldn’t care less about what an inappropriate mess they’ve already made of their courtship.

Steve would say he’d like someone else to try resisting a pliant, wanting Tony Stark, except the truth of the matter is that he really, absolutely, under any circumstance, wouldn’t.

Rumor say he’s engaged to be married, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> aaaaahhhh i hope you guys enjoyed that!!! i actually had a lot of fun with this prompt, which was from my stony bingo card-"permission". it probably says something about me that my first thought was steve asking for tony's hand in marriage but i don't really care lmAO laksjdlajfljg its late and im sleepy pls excuse anything i do 
> 
> background!!! im actually a big dummy and i was too lazy to research but assume this is in the 1890's in a quite rural but welathy town wherein the wealthiest stars are of course,,, the starks,,, and steve is a soldier who's just left the service and become the unofficial leader of the law force aka howard's little all american DARLING,,, only much to howard's now surprise steve is head over heels for his supposedly tepid and annoying son tony after years of them being friends bc howard wanted "a good influence in his life" 
> 
> can you tell how much i hate howard yet


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